Research Bulletin

Download the article: Helping Children: Where Research and Social Action Meet

As anthroposophy approaches the new millennium, the same thought is taking hold in many quarters: if we want to be effective in helping with contemporary world problems, we need to work more intensively with other individuals and groups who carry common concerns with us.

In this spirit I recently had the opportunity to meet with about 20 people working for large organizations with a deep concern for young children around the world. The meeting was called by the Academy for Educational Development in Washington, D.C. (web site: www.aed.org). With a staff of 500 and an annual budget of $101,000,000, it works in dozens of countries on a wide array of programs such as focusing on breast feeding and nutrition of children, biodiversity in El Salvador, HIV/AIDS among minority teens in the United States, and democracy in Eastern Europe.

Download the article: Computers, Brains, and Children

Jane Healy walks into the school’s computer room, where she sees a huge banner proclaiming, “COMPUTERS ARE OUR FUTURE!!!” Thirty-two nine- and ten-year-olds sit at the computers, pursuing their solitary math and reading tasks while a teacher and an aide lend what support they can.

Taking up a position behind Raoul, Healy watches as he effortlessly solves a few simple addition problems and then gleefully accepts his reward: a series of smash-and-blast games. When the games end, Raoul is confronted with more math problems. “Groaning slightly, he quickly solves the problems and segues expertly into the next space battle.”

Download the article: Movement and Sensory Disorders in Today's Children

Until recently, schools have trusted that the child was being raised primarily in the home, and that there was a division of labor between the family, which raised the child, and the school, which educated the child.

Download the article: Update -The Research Institute: The First Three Years

The Waldorf Education Research Institute (WERI) at Sunbridge College began three years ago as an initiative to strengthen Waldorf education in North America through research, dialogue of various kinds, and communication of ideas within and beyond the Waldorf education community. It has seemed to the editors of this Research Bulletin important to review the work of the Institute to date, looking at what has been accomplished, and taking stock of what must yet be done, if the Institute is to meet fully the tasks that confront it.

Download the article: The Nature Institute

The Need and the Task
In a recent book the Princeton biologist Lee Silver states,

While selfish genes do, indeed, control all other forms of life, master and slave have switched positions in human beings, who now have the power not only to control but to create new genes for themselves. Why not seize the power? Why not control what has been left to chance in the past .... On what basis can we reject positive genetic influences on a person’s essence when we accept the rights of parents to benefit their children in every other way?⁽¹⁾

Within the past year more and more scientists are willing to state—not always as blatantly as Silver—that genetic and other biotechnologies should be applied full force to the human being. This sentiment has long been beneath the surface and is now beginning to emerge more clearly into daylight. And since the work that flows from this view is supported not only by government monies, but also by the large investments of venture capitalists, there are at the present time strong forces propelling this expansion of biotechnology forward.

Download the article: Concerning Anthroposophical Research

Translation: Regina Brenner.

Where do you see the unsolved problems in anthroposophical research, and how about the verification of the research results?
I see unsolved problems in anthroposophical research in all fields. This lies in the nature of science in general, where each result immediately generates further research questions. I expect a large upswing of anthroposophical research in general, if we realize the research potential that is made possible through the established sections at the Free School for Spiritual Science. These are not limited special fields, but they lead to interdisciplinary questions. Rudolf Steiner has demonstrated this in an exemplary way in his lecture cycles, for example in the “Astronomical Course” (GA 323) and the “Pastoral Medicine Course” (GA 318). Only if different fields of research and experience cooperate, many problems (for example medical questions, social questions, pedagogical questions) can be worked upon deeply. We have to create the social conditions for the above, which means to awaken and stimulate the insight, that such is necessary. Presently we work upon this.

Download the article: Can Waldorf Education Be Practiced in Public Schools

In 1997, through the support of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Waldorf Education Research Institute (WERI) began a three-year study to investigate Waldorf education. The purpose of the study was to determine to what extent the pedagogical principles and practices of Waldorf education could be made general to public schools, particularly those serving poor minority children in urban settings. Data derived from a survey of 20 individuals involved in Waldorf and Waldorf-inspired schools provided three themes for the investigation: (1) education that addresses the needs of the whole child; (2) education that integrates the arts in curriculum, and (3) education with a clearly articulated philosophy of child development and teacher self-development. Such an investigation should help to inform the existing debate regarding Waldorf education's relationship to public schooling.

Download the article: Human Biography and its Genetic Instrument

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the significance of some of the results of Rudolf Steiner’s research for modern developments in genetics. The key concepts are: the etheric organism as the bearer of the laws and processes of inheritance; the metamorphosis of growth forces into those of thinking; the human “I” (self) as controller and modifier of genetic material and self-organization (molecular-Darwinism) seen anew in the light of anthroposophy.

Introduction
Human biography goes through characteristic stages in body, soul and spirit. At the physical level, active growth and development up to age 20 or 25 are followed by physiological functions continuing at the level reached until about 40 or 45, and then progressive involution and the physiological deterioration of old age to the end of life. Apart from this there are characteristic pathological processes, with acute febrile infectious diseases at their highest level in childhood, chronic diseases in old age, and psychosomatic conditions in mid-life. Compared to this, the human biography in soul and spirit shows remarkable differentiation. Childhood and youth show considerable differences depending on where a person grows up, what kind of schooling he or she has and where his or her interests lie. Choice of occupation and working life, the circumstances of private life-with or without family-all provide highly differentiated opportunities for learning and experience to further individual development.

Download the article: Challenges and Opportunities in Evolution Education

The question of evolution still inspires passionate debate 137 years after the presentation of Darwin and Wallace’s ideas on descent with modification as an explanation of the origin of the diversity of form and function we see in the plant and animal world. Not long ago the news reported a legislative battle in the same state that was the site of the famous Scopes trial. In 1925, Scopes, a biology teacher in Tennessee was prosecuted for teaching the theory of evolution in violation of state law. Seventy years later the Tennessee legislature debated passing a law that would require biology teachers to teach “Creation Science” as a legitimate alternative to the Darwinian theory of evolution. The contention is that both are legitimate theories explaining the origins of animals and, more importantly, of the human being. The epistemological equivalency of Biblical interpretation and scientific methodology is painfully ludicrous. But the concern that lies behind religious objections to the theory of evolution can evoke more sympathy. The traditional scientific view is one of the human being as an animal with no spiritual component, or at best a spiritual component that has to be tucked away and cannot form any part of a scientific theory. It is a view that profoundly alienates us from the world, our fellow human beings, and not the least, ourselves. It is no wonder that there is rebellion against such a view. How can we form a moral framework for life if, fundamentally, we are a chance accumulation of random events, resulting in some complex organic structure that is deluded into the view that it is somehow a free, moral being?

Download the article: Genes and Life-The Need for Understanding

“Which of our genes make us human?” An article with this title appeared last fall in Science (Gibbons, 1998). The article reports that there is hardly any difference between the DNA from humans and chimpanzees. Approximately 98.5% of the DNA is the same. A photo of a chimp standing upright accompanies the article, with this caption: “Chimpanzees may adopt the occasional two-legged pose, but they differ dramatically from humans in anatomy and behavior.” Given the similarity of humans and chimps at the DNA level, and the manifold differences at the biological and behavioral levels, we might conclude that DNA has little to do with the essential differences between human and chimp.

But the author of the article comes to a very different conclusion. She states:

This means that a very small portion of human DNA is responsible for the traits that make us human, and that a handful of genes somehow confer everything from an upright gait to the ability to recite poetry and compose music.

By Will Brinton

Download the article: The High Stakes of Standardized Testing

“She [Nature] is ever shaping new forms....
We live in her midst and know her not.
She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret.
We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her.”

     J.v. Goethe, from T.H. Huxley in Nature, Nov. 4, 1869.

“...there has rarely been a concept more abstract and devoid
of qualities than ‘environment’.”

     Wolfgang Sachs, in A Development Dictionary, Zed Books 1994

Introduction
For many of us who work in the environmental field, it is increasingly problematic to imagine a way of knowing nature that can be different from modern science’s mode of data capture and information accumulation. It has become virtually a truism in the modern environmental field that “..if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Knowing nature seems to mean having more data about her. More than anything, our modern era of science has set into motion a discovery modus operandi, which holds that every stone in nature will be turned over analytically to gain, we are told, a complete understanding of “the mechanisms of natural processes.” In a sense, we have not come very far since Rene Descartes (1596-1650) first formulated the view of the universe as a gigantic clock-mechanism.

By Edward Miller

Download the article: Ecology-Coming Into Being Versus Eco-Data

I recently participated in a study, conducted by the National Research Council, of the appropriate uses of standardized tests for making decisions about individual students. Its findings may be of interest to readers who are concerned about the ways in which the technology of testing has become one of the most powerful influences in our education system.

The study committee was charged by Congress with examining the use of test scores for so-called high-stakes purposes, defined as making decisions about tracking, promotion, and graduation. Such uses are proliferating all over the country, and are widely considered an effective tool for whipping the public schools into shape. For example, students in Chicago must now get at least a certain score on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to be promoted to the next grade. Starting next year, high school students in New York will have to pass the state Regents exam (formerly optional) to get a diploma. The committee found that, while testing can and often does yield valuable information about students’ achievement, the nature and limitations of that information are widely misunderstood. Test results, the study concluded, are often used improperly. In the case of high-stakes tests, the effects on individual students’ lives may be disastrous.

By Kim Payne, Arthur Zajonc and Martha Hadley

Download the article: A Waldorf Approach to Attention Related Disorders

A Creative Way to Understand and Help Children with Difficult Behavior

A WALDORF STUDY INTO ATTENTION RELATED DISORDERS
“What is that Waldorf Schools are doing that seems so effective in helping children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder⁽¹⁾(ADHD)?” Many involved in Waldorf education have heard questions like this from Health professionals eager to refer families. Why is it that as the problem of ADHD or what can be called Attention Related Disorders (ARD) increases so to does Waldorf Education’s reputation for being able to reach and teach children with challenging behavior?

A research project exploring the issue of ARD/ADHD in Waldorf Education now underway. The research team is Kim Payne, Arthur Zajonc and Martha Hadley. The project is being sponsored by the Anthroposophical Society of North America in partnership with the Alliance for Childhood, The Waldorf Education Research Institute, and The Hawthorn Foundation.

By Colleen Cordes

Download the article: Update: Forming An Alliance for Childhood

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
and not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.

William Wordsworth
From "Ode, Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections of Early Childhood"

As the millennium approaches, is the very notion of childhood obsolete?

Who, after all, really has the time in our fast-paced culture to let children be children?

By Douglas Gerwin

Download the article: Update: Waldorf High School Research Project

A New Initiative for Waldorf High Schools
In this decade the number of Waldorf high schools in North America has doubled-from 10 in 1990 to 22 as of this year. A further dozen Waldorf elementary schools are working on starting their own high schools in the next years.

This dramatic growth in the number of high schools highlights the need not only for finding and preparing Waldorf high school teachers but also points to a further question: how are our high schools faring? A group of seven Waldorf teachers with experience in teaching adolescents and administering at the high school level have banded together to initiate research into this question and a host of issues flowing from it.

By Michael D'Aleo and Stephen Edelglass

Download the article: Book Review: Sensible Physics Teaching

Reviewed by Douglas Sloan and Susan Howard

The publication of Sensible Physics Teaching by Michael D’Aleo and Stephen Edelglass is an important milestone for English speaking Waldorf class teachers. For the first time an elementary school curriculum in physics is available to them that is developed fully out of a Goethean-phenomenological approach while being presented in an accessible, dear and practical manner. The cover description is accurate:

“This book guides middle school teachers through a sense-based science pedagogy with a carefully developed sequence of experiments, described in detail and easy to follow. The emphasis is on the students’ experience: By observing this intriguing sequence of phenomena and deriving scientific concepts from them, students build an authentic relationship to and interest in-the world.”

By Frank R. Wilson, M.D.

Download the article: The Real Meaning of Hands-on Education

Editorial Introduction
Last year, Dr. Frank R. Wilson, a leading neurologist in this country and medical director of the Peter F. Ostwald Health Program for Performing Artists at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, published a remarkable book, entitled The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998). It is a special privilege for the Waldorf Research Bulletin to carry the following article by Dr. Wilson which presents some of the central arguments of his book.

Dr. Wilson is not a Waldorf educator, and, in fact, comes to his subject from a different perspective than that of Waldorf education. Waldorf teachers and parents will, nevertheless, find a striking convergence between the research and insights Dr. Wilson presents and the similar emphasis in Waldorf education on the intimate connection between the human hand and its activity and the development of creative thinking and language capacities. More than that, they will also find themselves carried further in their understanding of this all-important relationship by an author who joins his scientific, neurological expertise with a deep humanistic concern and wisdom.

By Dorit Winter

Download the article: America's Gold Rush: Can It Be Redeemed?

Based on talks given June 25 and 26, 1999 in Toronto, Canada at the annual teachers’ conference of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America

Dear Colleagues,

I live in an apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay and am most fortunate in having what the real estate agents refer to as a “Killer View.” In other words, it is an endlessly revivifying panorama.

Angel Island, beautiful in its symmetry, green and unspoilt, sits in the Bay half-way toward the opposite shore where Berkeley is just visible over the island’s shoulder. Further to the south you can see Alcatraz Island, derelict and barren, and the Bay Bridge, and Oakland on the other side of the Bay. Ferries, cargo ships and sailboats criss-cross the waters. In the distance, toward the east, the summit of Mt. Diablo peeks up over the low horizon of the East Bay hills. To the north, behind a ridge, Mt. Tamalpais rises up between the Bay and the Pacific. For the Ohlone Indians, who lived in this paradise of abundant game and fertile lands, Mt. Tam formed the gentle pole and Mt. Diablo the fierce pole of a great sacred circle. Now as then, fog, mist, wind, water and sunlight continually merge and remerge in an endless kaleidoscope of elemental beauty. And at the gate, the Golden Gate to this great bay, the elements swirl most intensely.

By Johan S. Aim, Jackie Swartz, Gunnar Lilja, Annika Scheynius and Goran Pershagen

Download the article: Atopy in Children of Families with an Anthroposophic Lifestyle

Editorial Introduction
The following Swedish research study comparing the rate of bronchial asthma, allergies, dermatitis and other atopic diseases among Waldorf school pupils and pupils in public schools originally appeared in the May 1, 1999, edition of the British medical journal, The Lancet. We reprint it here with permission of The Lancet.

The findings indicate that Waldorf/Steiner school pupils were “at a significantly lower risk of atopy” than children attending public schools. The researchers investigated a variety of factors in the lives of the Steiner school pupils which might have contributed to this lower rate of atopy—breastfeeding, lack of immunization, avoidance of antibiotics and medications which reduce fevers, consumption of bio-dynamic and organic foods, and other physical aspects of the children’s lives. The researchers called these “anthroposophic lifestyle characteristics” and quantified them as “Steiner units,” which they found “generally difficult to interpret.”

By Joan Almon

Download the article: Update: The Alliance for Childhood...

The spring issue of the Research Bulletin reported on the founding of the Alliance for Childhood, and we would now like to share an update of our activities. When the Alliance was founded last February, Colleen Cordes, one of the founding partners, promised to write an article about the Alliance for this Bulletin and then further promised to get the article into the hands of every member of the U.S. Congress! When the article appeared in the Bulletin we were suddenly faced with the question of how to fulfill that promise. Mailing costs alone were beyond our means.

It became clear that something higher was at work when the next day we received a call from a volunteer who wanted to help the Alliance in some way. At the time he was a courier for a law firm in Washington. When told about the mailing to Congress, his immediate response was, “I'll take two days off from work and deliver them all by hand.” And so it happened on Michaelmas and the day after with the help of added volunteers.

The cover letter to Congress pointed out the problems facing children today and requested hearings in areas such as the impact of media and computers in the lives of children. During the year we will follow up with a number of men and women in Congress whose committees deal with such matters.

By Bob Anderson

Download the article: Update: LEAP Project

The goal of the Waldorf LEAP is to develop learning expectations and a model assessment system for Waldorf schools, one that is fully aligned with the curriculum, teaching methods, developmental model of learning, and goals of Waldorf education, and that can provide Waldorf teachers and parents with a rich, qualitative picture of their students' progress towards achieving those goals.

The Project will be carried out by a collaborative of professional researchers and Waldorf educators, working throughout the nation with experienced individual teachers, teacher teams, and schools to reach a consensus vision of learning expectations for Waldorf students and to provide assistance to teachers in the assessment of student progress. Initial efforts will proceed in the areas of language arts, mathematics, and remedial education.

By Cindy Bajema

Download the article: Update: San Francisco Conference...

Polarities and Constitutional Types
A conference for teachers, therapists and physicians

This year's alumni conference of the San Francisco Waldorf Teacher Training of Rudolf Steiner College explored the theme of the four polarities or constitutional types which Rudolf Steiner characterized in various lectures.⁽¹⁾ Not just for alumni, the conference brought together about 40 people, including teachers, doctors, and therapists. The conference was organized and moderated by Dorit Winter, Director of the SF Teacher Training, and took place at the San Francisco Waldorf School on October 9 and 10, 1999.

By Susan Howard

Download the article: Update: The Work of the Waldorf Education Research Institute

In the January 1999 Research Bulletin, we reported on the work of the Waldorf Education Research Institute in its first three years. We expressed the need for financial support in order to achieve the following aims:

• Development of an active Advisory Board to identify and set priorities for research needs of the Waldorf movement
• Funding for the position of Director to coordinate and direct the various activities of the Institute
• Identifying and reviewing existing research within the Waldorf movement and relevant current research from the wider educational community
• Translating existing research from German into English
• Identifying and supporting worthy individual and group research projects.

By Roberto Trostli

Download the article: Balance in Teaching, Balance in Working, Balance in Living

Based on a talk given March 12 in Spring Valley, NY, at the Healthy Waldorf Schools Conference, sponsored by the Eastern Region of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America

Balance in teaching, balance in working, and balance in living-what could possibly qualify me to speak about this subject? I am certainly not a paragon of balance-quite the contrary! Yet those who suffer from an affliction are sometimes especially qualified to speak about it because they have first-hand experience of something others have only observed.

During the past years, as I have reflected on my teaching, my work, and my life, I have struggled to develop a vocabulary to describe my experiences more accurately. My life as a teacher swung between the extremes of selfishness and self-sacrifice. Is there a balance between these two? Is there a middle realm where we are at the same time self-less-in other words, less our everyday lower self-and self-more-more our eternal Self.

Download the article: Adult Education in the Light of Anthroposophy

The following article also appeared in Paideia, the educational research journal published by the Steiner Schools Fellowship in England. It is currently being worked with as study material by the teacher training institutes in the AWSNA Teacher Education Committee as they explore questions of Waldorf teacher training and adult education in North America.

Since the 1960s many anthroposophical adult education institutions have arisen throughout the world. Often they arose out of the need to train Waldorf teachers, but today they represent a primary avenue by which newcomers first meet and take up anthroposophy. Given all the destiny-changing influence these institutions have facilitated, we might ponder where the anthroposophical movement would be without them. Nonetheless, for all that can be credited to these adult education institutions, their activity does raise questions and concerns.